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Was Reconstruction A Success Or Failure Essay

620 Words3 Pages

The Union victory during the Civil War may have given 4 million slaves their freedom but the reconstruction attempts was a flop in the 1860s. The reconstruction was meant to bring the United States back together as one nation but there were faults so ultimately the era of Reconstruction was a failure. The Reconstruction Era in the United States was a failure and included unsuccessful efforts to defend former slaves, thrust freedmen into crippling poverty, and industrialization in the South lasted too long. Reunification of the Union was taken aback when many reconstruction efforts were unsuccessful. Failure to protect former slaves from white persecution and to change the social society in the South did not end well for newly freed slaves. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendment was made to help the freedmen, but whites still found a way to …show more content…

The mass of slaves was released from their previous plantations penniless, without anything to help them get started. Since slaves had no money, they would often go back to the plantation they worked on before. This would result in a cycle that the slaves could not get out of, even if they tried. The slaves would work on the plantation and by the end of there term on the field, they would owe money to the tenant. Usually, contracts were signed, so slaves could not leave the plantation till they didn’t owe money, this cycle basically got African Americans stuck in this cycle for a long time. During the Reconstruction, Era slaves lacked nourishment and medical care which in turn caused a high mortality rate, especially children. The freedmen's bureau was a huge deal for slaves, they helped to provide meals and food, but the organization was not able to build homes for the freed slaves. This was a big problem because even though they were getting food, medical care, and clothes, they had no roof over their

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